Alexander Dalloz wrote:
I read his post differently.Am Di, den 04.05.2004 schrieb John Aldrich um 19:59:
I think he's probably talking about Debian and related distros where you just do an "apt get" every night and it "automatically" updates everything to the latest version and there's no need to wipe and reinstall the way that it's often easier to do with RedHat / Mandrake / etc style distros.
I fear he could mean that. But that is a wrong impression, by two
meanings:
I thought he meant a non-linux OS, and his notion there is wrong as well.
I do not know of ANY os that does not do an upgrade (read new version release) periodically. Even if you can do the upgrade version of the new release it does have some limitations, and may not work well without upgrading the applications. Many applications that worked in 1995 may not work on an upgraded version in 2003 or later.. And many drivers that worked for the hardware in 1995 will not work with the new versions of the OS. Most applications written for todays versions of an OS will NOT work on an os from 1995 so you are stuck with old versions of the applications as well..
Thus, as you upgrade the OS you are also stuck with upgrading the applications you use as well, and vice-versa.
As a result I am not really sure what he is claiming, and I would like more information about what his thoughts are and what he is comparing RH/Fedora to.
1) Running Debian you have not "most current versions" like Bob claimed in his original posting. I am speaking here about the stable release. Running "Debian unstable" you are certainly some kind of most current but at the price of a bleeding distribution with very often fights against the system and to get it proper working. "Debian testing" might be taken a good choice by many Debian users, but it is neither stable nor does is have security updates.
2) You could upgrade Redhat releases the same way like Debian too. There are a lot of people who upgraded from former releases step by step. Of course, Debian is an exception because it ships a new stable release only once per decade, so upgrading is more rare. But upgrading means for all distribution: changes on the base system. Debian is no exception in that way. And if you did customize your system in a huge way you will face upgrading difficulties with each distribution.
I do not want to bash Debian. But Fedora meanwhile has with up2date and yum apt like tools on board too. And apt lovers can get it for the RPM system too from external.
Alexander
